With a perspective focused on public officers’ daily work, this paper studies the organizational implications for public administration of the development of a multi-level and multi-actors public action, known as “public... [ view full abstract ]
With a perspective focused on public officers’ daily work, this paper studies the organizational implications for public administration of the development of a multi-level and multi-actors public action, known as “public governance”.
Over the last decades, due to the development of participatory democracy and to a wave of decentralization in all Europe, the legitimization of a plurality of actors besides the central State has been a corner stone of public action. The increasing use of the notion of “governance” to describe public action is one of the main illustrations of this evolution, but the role of the central State and its administration in this new context remains hardly known. Our research question is: what does “administrating” involve in a context of governance?
The literature on street level bureaucrats highlighted their role as real makers of public action (Lipsky, 1980). More recently, other works enlightened their role in the sensemaking of public action. A perspective through public officers’ daily work seems therefore essential to understand organizational implications of contemporary public action evolution. But, as little is known on how street level bureaucrats actually elaborate their action, we argue that organizational routine dynamics theory may contribute to a better understanding of how street level bureaucrats develop their action in the changing environment of contemporary administration.
The main contributions of this paper are to the organizational routine dynamics literature (D’Adderio, 2014; Feldman & Pentland, 2003) and to the literature on hybridity in the public sector (Denis et al., 2015). First, in the field of the organizational routine dynamics literature, we add to the understanding of how the multiplicity in the routines can be a support to address multiple and contrasted objectives in the organization. Then, in the field of hybridity in the public sector (Denis et al., 2015), we contribute to the call to bring together works from public administration and organization studies, by drawing on organizational theory to develop a better view of how hybridity is constituted on a micro level.
To address our research question, we conducted a longitudinal study on the emergence of a new activity (the Environmental Authority), from 2009 to 2015, in the French public administration in charge of environmental issues and sustainable development. We developed a qualitative methodology, through a survey and embedded case studies based on interviews and document analysis.
Drawing on this study, first, we show how heterogeneity and variability are developed in public officers’ daily action. Then, we highlight the state of uncertainty and tension generated by the development of this new activity, which is rooted in the traditional administrative organization but needs to contribute to a new form of public action, conceived with a governance logic, in other words, based on a multiplicity of actors with various influences and interactions in different configurations. Analyzing the heterogeneity and variability of public officers’ action through the organizational routine dynamics theory, we highlight how they lead to the elaboration of a hybrid action that addresses the multiplicity and contrasted roles and objectives of administrative activities.
